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A creative (albeit fake) poster for the future Angry Birds film.

Until now, all the haughty talk of a full-length feature film was just that. A lot of talk. And perhaps a clever media strategy too.

Rovio, the Finnish game developer behind Angry Birds– the mobile game about vengeful birds and greedy pigs that has spread, like bird flu, from Helsinki to the iPhone, Android, iPad, Web and soon, to Facebook– has three choice topics when speaking to the media.

The first is growth. The company just hit 250 million downloads, more than double the 100 million downloads it reported three months ago. Rovio likes to say it can top a billion downloads by the end of next year. The media loves that kind of chutzpah. Its second media-friendly talking point? An initial public offering. In an interview with Reuters, Rovio’s chief marketing exec Peter Vesterbacka hinted that Rovio planned to go public within the next five years. A few minutes later, the news had been covered by nearly every IPO-hungry media outlet (including, this one) across the globe. Its third choice topic may very well be Disney. Rovio now enjoys the dubious honor of being the third most knocked-off brand in China, trailing only Disney and Sanrio’s Hello Kitty. And, as Vesterbacka told me, Rovio thinks it can be the dragon's leading entertainment brand by 2012.

That last claim really gets the blogosphere going, but as realistic growth projections go, it sounds absurd. Rovio has an 18-month-old mobile game. Disney's Up, Wall-E and Toy Story 3 were all nominated for Academy Awards. Rovio made $20 million (in revenue) last quarter. Disney plans to spend that amount every ten days for the next five years building its new resort in Shanghai.

“It reminds me of the time Michael Stipe said R.E.M. was bigger than the Beatles,” says Michael Pachter, a gaming analyst with Wedbush Securities. “I am mystified there is even a remote possibility Rovio believes what it’s saying about being bigger than Disney in China, or going public. It’s like the Rubik’s Cube guy saying he wants to go public.”

But the game developer actually seems to take its own claim seriously. In June, Rovio acquired Kombo, the Finnish animation studio, to expand its in-house animation capabilities and it recently secured a grant from the Finnish Film Foundation to start planning its first full length animation film. Just today, Rovio hired David Maisel, the former chairman of Marvel Studios and the executive producer behind Iron Man, to join the startup as a special advisor and act as executive producer for its future feature film.

“David was instrumental in rebooting Marvel Studios and turning it into a blockbuster-producing powerhouse. We welcome his experience and vision as we continue broadening our entertainment production scope at Rovio,” Rovio’s chief executive Mikael Hed said in a statement.

The news has Rovio’s investors’ fingerprints all over it. Rovio got a $42 million boost from Accel Partners, Felicis Ventures and the founders of Skype last March. Accel’s Rich Wong led the investment in the game developer and Rovio is now clearly tapping into Accel’s growing network in Hollywood. Accel managing partner Jim Breyer recently took a board seat at Thomas Tull’s Legendary Pictures and was a board member at Marvel when Disney acquired the company for $4 billion in 2009. Maisel orchestrated the acquisition for Marvel and stepped down shortly after to contemplate his next move–only to pop up at Rovio today.

“I’m very honored and excited to join Rovio, and my goal is to help unleash its great potential,” Maisel said in his hiring announcement. “Rovio has already had amazing success and established a great brand with Angry Birds. The business model, intellectual properties, and the franchise potential of Angry Birds give Rovio the most exciting prospects I have seen in the entertainment business since Marvel in 2003.”

Rovio’s Hollywood ambitions now put it in untrodden territory. Where other game developers use one game’s success to build out a diversified suite of games, Rovio is squarely focused on expanding Angry Birds onto every platform imaginable. Zynga took the eyeballs from Texas Hold ‘Em Poker and spread the wealth to new games like Farmville, Cityville, Mafia Wars and now, Gagaville. Rovio took the eyeballs from Angry Birds and sold three million plush toys, a million t-shirts and just announced a cookbook, the “Bad Piggies Egg Recipes” (really though, shouldn’t it feature variations on bacon?). Meanwhile, it keeps its players entertained with new updates, 40 ways to play the game, 300 levels and three new brand installments: Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio and the soon-to-be-revealed Mine and Dine (a new game that features its grubbing pigs and plump birds underground).

Putting all its angry eggs in one basket is a risk, but less of one than it used to be given the billions of devices in the hands of consumers. I asked Mikael Hed whether he thinks Angry Birds can be the avian equivalent of Super Mario Brothers, or worries that it could end up the modern-day equivalent of Coleco Industries, which soared to the top of the toy industry in the mid-80s with its Cabbage Patch Kids, then imploded in debt.

Hed seemed unfazed: “We studied the flash in the pans and work diligently to avoid their mistakes,” he said. “I used to worry this was a fad, but I don’t anymore. The Angry Birds brand is now so well-known it’s hard to imagine this all going away.”